rearing chamber

[cephalopoder]

Here are a few pics of my almost finished rearing system. Each chamber has seperate flow though, , no chance of cross contamimation, the drilled shelf is removeable and new ones can be made to house different size chambers. The over flow at the
end is big enough to use as a refugium for growing ceph food and I can even change the flow though the chambers for upflow or down flow. Plastic sheaths can be slid over each rearing chamber to make the rearing containers any color I choose. Water will be pumped from a main tank though a 25 micron pleate with a UV steralizer in the houseing before water enters the rearing setup. Flow can be set any any desired level. The containers are 702ml each and should be able to house several hatchlings per a chamber. This configuration currenty has 18 chanbers. Each chamber has a fine nylon mesh attached to the top and bottom for water to flow through.
Few more things to add for now but a project like this is always evolving.
chris

 

[cephalopoder]

second shot

 

[Rudiger]

Very cool. Looks well made, is that constructed with acrylic? So are you going to put a few eggs in each chamber or have them all isolated? What color or colors are you going to have around the containers? You should probably experiment and have some one color and some another. Have you read the discussion about Steve O'shea's squid rearing over at Tonmo.com?

pat

 

[cephalopoder]

Yes pat it is all 1/4" acrylic I put together myself and drilled. The bad news is I looked at the eggs in the cave and allot of them seem to have stopped growing and some look infertile as they are completely clear. I was wondering if the eggs in the cave did not have enough flow over them? I wrote to Dr Roy Caldwell and told him my situation and he said hatching O.mercatoris is iffy at best. It seems he had four clutches of O.mercatoris eggs last month laid by different females and only one cluth out of four hatched!
The one on the string looks great and the little octo can be seen moving in the egg. So thats at least one that is good. I will have to see what comes out of the cave but it dosent look good.
I did have flow going though the chamber though sooo? Time will tell. I have called TBS to see if a gravid female can be caught for me and I am waiting to see if they are still in season.
As far as the color of the chambers I will try black , blue,grey and clear when the time come. I will put up to 3 in some chambers with plenty of hiding spots. I haven't made it to tonmo in some time because I have a hard time keeping up with this message bord lately being so busy with every thing going on. I will have to check it out though.
chris

 

[OctoMonkey]

Hi Chris,
If there is a next time for me I will definetly be making my chambers black or at least very dark, i think that would help them and from what i have since read too, Maybe mine were too bright????

I hope the rest of the eggs are okay for you....

One problem i intially had was that my nylon mesh didnt allow water to pass through too well because it was so fine, have you checked that out? after a while the water simply didnt penetrate into the tubs and flowed off the top.....

Next time I would add hell of a big airpump blasting in a container with the water just before it goes into the chambers...

C